From Steamshovel Press #8:

Mae Brussel:
 
Secret Service Files On 
The Queen of ConspiracyTheorists
by X. Sharks DeSpot

     "We are identical to Germany in 1932...Nothing is natural
today. Billions are going into creating divisions, terror, to
make headlines, to spread confusion and fear."(1)

     If ever there was a time Mae Magnin Brussell summed up her
view of the world, that was it. The country, indeed the whole
world, was being transformed into a police state, a gigantic
conspiracy which was responsible for almost every disturbing
event. As her obituary stated:
     "Ms. Brussell contended that the Kennedy assassinations,
Martin Luther King's assassination, the (Charles) Manson family
murders, the Chappaquiddick affair and the Patricia Hearst
kidnapping were all set into motion by the far right, the CIA,
the FBI and the Mafia under a massive conspiracy to discredit the
left and establish a fascist state."(2)
     This, along with her speaking style, condemned Mae Brussell
to minority status. She may not have been, as an FBI agent said,
a "crank", but she was on the political fringe throughout her
twenty five year long career. Most people, regardless of
political affiliation and ideology, simply do not see the country
as being on the verge of fascism.
     She did have several advantages. First and foremost is that
she was a true believer. Most of the 120 pages which make up her
Secret Service file were generated because she called them. More
than half the file's bulk would not exist if she had simply
refrained from sending letters to presidents, calling up various
police agencies, or visiting Maureen Reagan, daughter of the
then-president Ronald Reagan. Someone who was only interested in
the publicity would probably have lost interest in what she did
as she became old news. If she had been trying to make money, she
simply would not have invited trouble by annoying the Secret
Service as often as she did.
     This, I think, was because she was topical. She spent a
large amount of time simply clipping magazine articles and cross-
referencing them with her ever-growing collection of newspaper
clipping and books. As a result, she was usually very up-to-date,
focusing on Watergate and Howard Hughes during the 1970s, and
then changing her emphasis to Contragate during the 1980s. She
provided a fresh conspiratorial topic with each of her weekly
radio shows: cattle mutilations; the House Select Committee on
Assassinations; Interpol; the Jonestown Guyana massacre; and on
and on. There was hardly a conspiratorial topic which she did not
cover. Her confidence in conspiracy theories never ended because
conspiracy theories kept coming up.
     Her United States Secret Service file begins some time after
May 20, 1973. The first thing in the file is a letter from Mae
Brussell to President Richard M. Nixon, asking that he stop by
and discuss with her the problems of the nation. The letter gives
one the feeling of having walked into the middle of a play but
having missed the beginning. This is because of...

To read the rest of this article and the others listed on the
contents page of Steamshovel Press #8, order the back issue. $5
post paid from Steamshovel Press, POB 23715, St. Louis, MO 63121

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